Exploring The Artistic Life Of Japan's Major Cities | Art Of Japanese Life | Journal

[Music] it was a bright August morning and commuters were making their way to work in a provincial City in Western Japan it was shaping up to be a day like any [Music] other but at exactly 8:15 an American bombarder above them pulled a lever [Music] the commuters may have seen a flash of light but within seconds they and the City of Hiroshima were engulfed in the largest man-made explosion in history 70,000 people were killed instantly and the city was all but [Music] annihilated it was the beginning of the nuclear age but the Japanese had seen disasters before the history of Japanese cities is the history of their Destruction for centuries indeed Millennia earthquakes fires floods tsunamis and Wars have decimated the country's towns and cities over and over again but this Relentless cycle has had a dramatic Creative Impact it has forced the Japanese to constantly rebuild and reimagine their cities and today they are some of the most dynamic places in the world to discover why I'm going to explore the culture of three great Japanese cities in three decisive eras Kyoto the country's capital for over a thousand years a city of Elegance and Splendor that gave birth to a golden age of painting and poetry and even turned te into an art form holding this bowl is a kind of Revelation Edo a teeming Metropolis with a dark underbelly a floating world of actors artists and sex workers that produced a Bohemian Urban culture centuries before the [Music] west and Tokyo today the largest urban area on the planet a conveyor belt of fashion film and contemporary art that now influences the entire world these three cities produce some of Japan's finest and most distinctive art but they did more than that they also shaped the country's attitude towards its past and present as well as to East and West and in doing so they helped mold the very idea of Japan [Music] itself in the spring of 793 ad a small group of men embarked on a journey through honu they claimed they were on a hunting trip but they weren't hunting animals they were searching for a piece of land the men were convinced that their Hometown which was called nagako was cursed for the best part of a decade it had been ravaged by floods disease famine and even a series of mysterious murders they knew they had to abandon it but first they had to find the site for a new city they hadn't gone far before they all lighted on something promising a vast fertile Basin surrounded on three sides by a fortress of mountains and irrigated by not one but two rivers they had found their sight by the Autumn of the following year the emperor had founded his Capital here he called it hean Koo capital of peace and Tranquility though it later became known as Kyoto Kyoto has been built and rebuilt many times since then but it remains a place of unparalleled riches it is home to, 1600 temples 400 shrines and 17 UNESCO world heritage sites more than any other city in the world the original city of Kyoto was a work of art in its own right it was inspired by changan the great capital of China and every part of it was carefully planned the city was organized almost like New York according to a strict grid system now these streets were Splendid thoroughfares even the narrowest of them was 78 ft wide and the widest of them suzaku Avenue which ran right down through the middle of the city that was almost 300 ft wide it was probably the widest Boulevard in the world at the time and suzaku Avenue terminated right here in the north of Kyoto at the city Palace now I've got to say looking down over this scale model I really think it looks like a wonderful place to live most of the houses are one-story high so it's light it's Airy there are Gardens there are lakes there are rivers it is a world OFW away from the dark Warren of Filth that made up most cities of the time Kyoto was the blueprint for Utopia a dream of a rational and beautiful society that the emperor hoped would last forever but it wasn't as perfect as it seemed over the following Generations the palace burnt down no less than 14 times and the whole Western half of the city was repeatedly flooded but this didn't prevent the fortunate members of the court from enjoying the Finer Things in life most of them borrowed from the [Music] Chinese they ruminated on cherry blossoms and staged Moon watching ceremonies they even collected crickets and made music to accompany their chirps in Kyoto style was emphatically substan if any one idea governed the cultural values of the Court it was the word miabi now miabi doesn't have a direct English translation but it meant a kind of refinement or aesthetic sensibility the ability to recognize and appreciate beauty in all of its forms the culture of Kyoto was advanced in another notable way many of its leading practitioners were women and the greatest of them was Murasaki shikibu born into a minor aristocratic family around 973 ad Murasaki served as a lady in waiting at the Imperial Court but in her spare time she started writing something Murasaki was writing a story of monumental proportions indeed twice as long as War and Peace it spanned four generations and 75 years it contained 4 430 different characters and 795 unique poems and today many consider it to be the first novel ever written anywhere in the world it was called the tale of Genji the story focuses on the life of a raish young prince called Hikaru Genji intelligent beautiful and possessed with impeccable taste Genji is the Paragon of Miyabi and though he spends much of his youth womanizing he becomes one of the Court's most powerful men he builds a grand palace in the city and fills it with the women he loves but then things start to go wrong Genji marries a woman who then Bears another man's child his relationships with his other lovers deteriorate and when his greatest love dies Genji loses the will to live it is not long before his life also comes to an end the whole world mourned Genji it was as if a light had gone out for his ladies for his grandchildren for others who had been close to him the sadness was of course more immediate and intense it is true they all thought the cherry blossoms of spring are loved because they bloom so briefly Genji's life was indeed cut short but asaki's remarkable novel lived on many illustrations of the tale of Genji were made in painted hand Scrolls here in the tokogawa museum in Nagoya are the oldest examples from the 12th century only fragments survive but they are some of the country's greatest treasures though almost a millennium old the complex pth patterns of color and shape still convey powerful emotional stories and I've come to look at one of the most affecting this painting captures a turning point in Genji's life while he was away his wife had an affair with his nephew she became pregnant and gave birth to a boy called CaRu now Genji didn't want to admit to being cockled did so he had to accept CaRu as his Heir even though he knew he wasn't and here we can see Genji holding the baby boy in his arms and though this image is small and old and Tatty you can still see the complex powerful emotions racing across Genji's face it's Tau with resentment and humiliation and yet as Genji looks down on that beautiful innocent boy we can see him beginning to soften his ey brows are lifting and his little pink lips are curling into a smile the composition has been used to emphasize and dramatize Genji's own torn state of mind so these powerful diagonals Race Across the surface of the picture and imprison Genji right into the corner the Fabrics tumble into this chaotic mess of lines and perhaps most powerfully of all the relationship between Genji here and his wife who has become a nun following her indiscretion speaks volumes they are together but they are of course completely apart this masterpiece of Japanese art reminds me that though times may change human emotions don't the people of Kyoto had m mastered the art of painting but Aesthetics pervaded everything they did poetry calligraphy garden design and over the centuries it even extended to tea the Japanese had been enjoying tea since the 9th century when it was introduced from China but in the late 16th century it began to take on a special significance at the Buddhist temple of dtoo is a tea house made in honor of the great Japanese tea Master senu here in a small simple room Riu and his companions turned tea drinking into an art form senu Riu believed tea was much more than a drink it was a revelation when drunk in the right way tea helped people rise to a different plane of Consciousness when you hear the water splash into the tea Bowl he once said you will feel the dust in your mind is washed away Senor riku's ideas gradually crystallized into what we know as the Japanese tea [Music] [Music] ceremony [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] Senor Riku wanted the Tea Ceremony to express an appreciation of modesty imperfection and impermanence and this even extended to his utensils he thought traditional Ceramics were too elaborate so he set about finding an alternative he asked a Craftsman called chojiro to Fashion a simple undecorated tea Bowl this was the beginning of Raku pottery and Choo's descendants are still making it [Music] today Raku Kites on the 15th is the 15th generation of Potters in his family he continues a tradition that was started 450 years ago and he is in my view one of Japan's greatest living artists so where are we here here here is a there is a many many old crate uh now I use the crate this gr my grand grandfather TR about uh 100 ago wow and are you collecting clay for your descendants yes [Music] [Music] for for this is a seal t- ball it was made by chiro the founder of Raku Pottery it's more than 400 years old might even have been used by sen noru in the late 16th century now at first it doesn't look like much it's small and misshaped the walls aren't straight the lips are wobbly and it's covered in a simple plain black glaze but to really appreciate it you need to pick it up because holding this bowl is a kind of Revelation the weighting the texture the temperature are all just perfect and as I hold it I Can Feel This Groove running along the middle of it that fits the hands perfectly it feels almost as though you're feeling Choo's fingers 400 years later this is an artwork to be held to be touched to be felt this is an artwork to be used this tbowl is the epitome of wabby saabi that Japanese reverence for the imperfect The Unfinished the worn out because to appreciate those things isn't only to be humble it's to understand that we too are imper we too are as flawed as this t- bow so this object isn't simply a bowl it's a lesson a lesson to all of us to appreciate the simpler things in life in the 800 years since its founding Kyoto had done much to establish a classical Japanese culture although much of it had been Chinese in flavor Kyoto would continue to flourish after 1600 but a new regime was coming and it would create a new great [Music] City Japan was embroiled in Civil War for the entire 16th century until in 1600 a warrior called Tokugawa yasu took control of the country he was given the title Shogun and established the Tokugawa Shogun nut which ruled the country for more than 260 years rejecting Kyoto yasu moved his Capital to a down at heel fishing Village 300 mil North called Edo it would not remain a fishing Village for long like most Japanese cities Edo was prone to destruction in fact over the next few centuries it was torn apart by fire pretty much every 20 to 30 years but those fires did nothing to suppress Edo's growth by the early 1700s more than a million people lived there twice as many as in London it had become one of the largest cities perhaps the largest city in the world the tagawa closed the country's borders to all but a few Dutch Traders and enforced a rigid social hierarchy the rulers of Edo preached a gospel of discipline and austerity but not everyone was listening over time the towns folks started to make their own culture a popular culture a counterculture of astonishing [Music] Vitality their Edo was populated by actors dancers sumo wrestlers puppet shows gangsters and cortis it was a long way from the refined culture of the Court Japan had seen nothing like it before these decadent going on were centered around Edo's pleasure District a wall community that was often referred to as ukio which in English means floating world but the floating world wasn't only a physical place it was also a state of mind living only for the moment turning our full attention to the pleasures of the Moon the snow the cherry blossoms and the Maple Leaves singing songs drinking wine diverting ourselves and just floating floating caring not a wit for the popism staring Us in the face refusing to be disheartened like a gourd floating along with the river current this is what we call the floating World We tend to talk a lot about 19th Century Paris being the epitome of a Modern urban decadent culture but Edo was doing exactly the same thing 200 years [Music] earlier and Edo's floating World produced art forms that were distinctly Japanese one of them was Kabuki Legend has it that Kabuki was invented in Kyoto in 1603 the same year was the shenut itself it said that it started when a group of women staged an explicit song and dance routine for a group of staggered men and unsurprisingly it proved [Music] popular Kabuki developed into a striking form of theater with highly stylized movement and extravagant costumes the best actors became major city s celebrities Kabuki theaters could be rockus places the audiences hissed and booed they leapt on stage they started scuffles and riots in the stands in rooms like this the strict social order of the shokut could be temporarily and deliriously abandoned the Government tried to regulate this exuberant new art form but it proved popular even with with the Samurai and it's still going today itawa eizo is the 11th generation in a single dynasty of Kabuki performers that goes back more than 300 years to the Edo period he is also one of the most famous men in [Music] Japan [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Applause] Kabuki was first performed by an all female cast but the Shogun of who disliked its licentious reputation banned women from the stage they were soon replaced by men in both male and female [Applause] [Music] [Applause] roles performances could last all day and attracted every social class young and old rich and poor rubbed [Applause] shoulders [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] spe [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh lots of what we know today about traditional Kabuki comes from the remarkable images that immortalized it like Kabuki they were a crucial part of Edo's floating world and a now synonymous with Japanese culture in general woodblock printing had been practiced in Japan for hundreds of years but in the Edo period it became possible to make full color prints for the first time they became hugely successful they were very common and usually very cheap but they are now the best known images in Japanese [Music] art kazua Watanabe is a woodcut artist he has been making prints for 50 years and uses the same methods pioneered in 17th century Edo how did you start as an Uka print maker in the first place for for [Music] woodcuts were bought and sold around Edo in their thousands and many focused on the floating world the Japanese even called them ukio pictures of the floating world and no artist captured it better than kitagawa [Music] utamaro utamaro is one of the great enigmas in art his pictures maybe be world famous but we know virtually nothing about the man who made them we don't know when he was born we know nothing about his background he's mentioned in no official records he left behind no letters no Diaries no personal documents like the floating world utamaro thrived in the halflight one thing however seems likely utamaro spent plenty of time in Edo's red light district a third of all of his pictures are of the city's sex workers utamaro's fascination with the women of Edo is evident in a book he published in 1788 called the poem of the pillow it consisted of 12 salacious images this is a rare early copy containing the original utamaro prints and I've come to see my favorite this picture depicts a man and a woman kissing in upstairs in a tea house we know it's upstairs because the leaves of a Comedia tree are peeking out almost eavesdropping over the balcony there's some suggestion that the characters are already having sex on the fan there's a poem that reads its beak caught firmly in the clamshell the snipe cannot Escape of an Autumn evening fortunately perhaps unfortunately we can neither see the nor the clamshell but you know what I find so seductive about this image is what isn't shown we can't for instance see the faces of this couple we have to imagine who they are it's the details that are so irresistible the curve of her buttocks the nape of her neck which at the time was considered more sexual even than the genital her hairs standing up on end his left hand touching her shoulder her left hand touching his chin pH but I tell you if you look closer there is something truly remarkable in this picture right here half hidden by her hair is an eye his eye looking at her or perhaps it's looking at us now I have no evidence for this whatsoever but I wonder I just wonder whether that is utamaro himself staring at us across the [Music] centuries utamaro was a master of understatement but not all his images showed such restraint erotic images were popular with both men and women at every level of society in Japan we might see them as vaguely pornographic today but the term wouldn't have been understood in 18th century [Music] Edo they were called shunga which literally meant spring pictures and they celebrated intimacy and sexual pleasure in imaginative and often explicit detail but the floating world was not the only subject of woodblock [Music] printing in the 1850s hosig made a 100 views of the great city of Edo itself they capture its shop fronts its teeming [Music] streets its waterways and its Coast the images themselves are breathtaking the inventiveness the dynamism the wit and the irrepressible Beauty [Music] hosig utamaro and the other print makers of Edo had perfected a remarkable Japanese art form but they'd also established the basis of a new visual grammar bold graphic economical and it wouldn't be long before their style caught on around the world in the mid 19th century Japanese trade route began to open and their goods began to be sent across the seas kimonos fans writing paper porcelain and pottery Lac aware and of course countless Uki prints soon flooded the west and the West Was [Music] astonished European artists were impressed by Yukio a prince they turned up in manise backgrounds and Monet's foregrounds Vincent van was so inspired by Hiro that he copied this image of Edo and so Japanese Innovations helped shape modern art as we know [Music] it the people of Edo had achieved something really rather significant they had invented a culture that For the First time seen distinctly Japanese and one that then went on to influence the rest of the [Music] world but as Japan changed the West so the West changed Japan previously isolated for hundreds of years traditional Japanese Society now seemed out of step with Modern Life the rule of the Samurai and their closed borders was coming to an end from the 1860s Japan would discard much of its centuries old culture and aim instead to become a modern industrial nation as a statement of intent the city of Edo would be [Music] rebranded Japan's capital was both new and old it was essentially still the city of Edo same site same buildings many of the same residents but it was now reactivated with a new identity and a new name from the 13th of September 1868 we would know it as Tokyo it was in Tokyo where where these Western aspirations first took physical form and most noticeably in [Music] architecture at the end of the 19th century European looking buildings began to appear on the city's streets the ministry of Justice could have been transplanted from Paris and the city's Neo Barac train station seems to better belong in Amsterdam but the most striking anomaly was the crown Prince's residence completed in 1909 this is akasaka Palace its architect tokuma katayama spent a year traveling through Europe studying the great Royal residences of Germany France and Britain and with this building I'm sure you'll agree he is channeling the spirit of Buckingham [Music] Palace it is if such a thing is possible even more Regal inside the grand staircase is made out of Karan marble from Italy and long do marble from France and the vast State rooms upstairs are overflowing with decoration there are paintings done in the European manner and the chandeliers which each contain 7,000 pieces and weigh almost a ton were specially shipped in from France if I were taken into this building blindfolded and not told where I was I am pretty sure I would never guess that it was in Japan walking through this Palace if anything it feels like I'm in Versailles a strange Alter Ego of Versailles but that was the point this building and many others like it in Tokyo were part of an attempt to represent Japan as well a European power it was a Brazen Act of cultural appropriation akaaka Palace ended up costing a huge 5.1 million yen it was deemed too extravagant even for the Crown Prince and it spent much of the 20th century uninhabited [Music] outside the palace Tokyo was changing in other ways a huge program of construction and industrialization was underway Railways trams and trunk roads transformed the fabric of the city and then it was transformed yet further by a series of very Japanese disasters on the 1st of September 1923 the great Kanto earthquake struck Tokyo killing 142,000 people and obliterating much of the city Tokyo had barely recovered when it was torn apart [Music] again during the second world war the US Air Force embarked on an aerial bombing campaign against Japan 67 cities were targeted 500,000 people were killed and more than half of Tokyo was destroyed as Japan rebuilt itself once again it embraced a new kind of supercharged modernity where progress with a capital P was all that mattered between 1945 and 1963 the population of Tokyo Grew From 3.5 million to over 10 million as increasingly people deserted the countryside and moved to the city at the same time the nation experienced unprecedented economic growth and yet in the process of remodeling Tokyo many were left behind stuck in the cracks between the shiny developments and these cracks just about survive in a small part of Shinjuku called Golden guy [Music] golden guy was rebuilt after the war and soon became a world of its own a Warren of alleys and bars this was the floating world of modern Tokyo a place utamaru might have felt at home and in 1961 a modernday utamaro stepped into it Dao morama [Music] the founding father of Japanese street photography he was 23 when he first came to Tokyo and found a day job as a camera assistant but at night he was sucked into the darkness of [Music] Shinjuku [Music] Mor's methods are simple he wanders up and down the streets of Shinjuku ducking into narrow alleys and dark Corners looking in every direction and as he goes he uses a small portable camera to take snap after snap after [Music] snap mariama's early photographs captured the rootless and hedonistic inhabitants of Tokyo's underbelly but increasingly he subverted his medium in 1972 in his classic work farewell photography his portraits of the city were so blurred grainy and uncomposed that they were almost illegible do you find the city particularly exciting at certain times of the day or night ins for [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] for got there if anyone photograph captures mariama's work it is this one made in 1971 an unkempt stray dog glances back at the photographer in the winter Sunshine the dog is surely a proxy for morama himself a loner Scavenging the streets for scraps but it is also perhaps a symbol of Japan a country that hadn't yet found its identity in the turbulence of the 20th [Music] century and yet in the following years Japan raced yet further into the future the economic miracle that had begun in the 1960s reached its peak in the 1980s and the country became the second largest economy in the world Tokyo was the motor of these changes and was rebuilt and redeveloped at a Relentless [Music] rate out of this turbulent period a popular art form emerged that came to Define an entire subculture the art of the comic or to use the Japanese word [Music] manga today Comics are emphatically mainstream around 40% of all published material in Japan takes manga form and they are not simply for children a lot of what we see here looks pretty Naf but in many respects there were similarities between the culture that came out of modern Tokyo and the culture of Edo's floating World in both cases it was cheap throwaway content for the young the curious and those with pocket money to spare and if you're looking for a modern equivalent of a Uka print look no further than manga the Aesthetics of manga has become synonymous with Japanese popular culture some of its characters are now universally recognized one of the first to gain popularity outside Japan was Akira written and illustrated by K hero otmo Akira was also the Catalyst for a burgeoning new art form that also came to prominence in the80s and would go on to capture the imagination of the West anime in 1987 Akira was made into a classic anime [Music] film it begins with an all too familiar scene Tokyo being raised to the ground the story that follows has all the necessary ingredients of modern science fiction post-apocalyptic dystopia government conspiracy and children with superpowers but the star of the show is Neo Tokyo itself a dazzling setting for Dreams and [Music] Nightmares in the following year another film Revisited the wartime destruction of Japan's cities grave of the fireflies is a landmark in animation history it tells the tragic story of two siblings struggled to survive during the final months of the second world [Music] war the film was directed by Isa takahata one of the co-founders of studio jibli and it drew on his own memories of the war [Music] [Music] for e [Music] for now in his 80s takahata has published a book about the connection between the sequential art of early Japanese hand Scrolls and Anime which he sees as belonging to the same narrative art tradition wow so this is a fire tearing down the city [Music] when you look at a scroll like this do you feel like you're looking at the work of people in the same business as you [Music] the great anime films were just part of a broader blossoming of Japan's creative Industries which were born out of distinctly Japanese Urban experiences but spoke to the wider world since the 1980s Japan and Tokyo in particular has become a creative hub for food fashion film consumer electronics computer games and many other forms of popular culture take a pick of a recent craze or fad it's likely to have originated here in many of these areas the great city of Tokyo absor absorbed the most modern Fashions remade them in thrilling ways and then exported them back to the world this dizzying high-speed Urban aesthetic has also influenced Japan's artists they have derived inspiration from the city and from the popular culture It produced but of all of them none better captures the Zeitgeist than an 87-year-old woman called Yayo Kosama Kosama has been creating her own brand of pop art since the 1960s resulting in a psychedelic array of popular but deeply personal [Music] imagery but kasama most celebrated installations are her mirror rooms small dark Chambers covered on all sides and reflective surfaces illuminated only by twinkling LEDs and transformed into Infinite indoor galaxies you can understand why this art has delighted people around the world it's like I don't know it's almost like falling into a kaleidoscope or stepping onto a Sci-Fi stage set but you know what more than anything else this piece reminds me of it reminds me of the city it reminds me of an almost infinite Metropolis glittering away in the [Music] night over the centuries cities have inspired some of Japan's greatest art but they are themselves creations Dynamic complex and often beautiful this is a story of Japan's Urban imagination and how three great cities built its art and culture in Kyoto the Japanese mastered Beauty and elegance in Edo they found their own often mischievous voice and in to Tokyo they turn destruction into creation and in the process they helped Define a country as it relentlessly searched for [Music] itself cities are engines of cultural change because they throw people together to compete and collaborate and innovate it's the case around the world of course but I can't think of many countries that are more defined by their cities and [Music] Japan in the final episode I'll be venturing into the most intimate spaces in Japan it's homes I'll explore how in Japan the house became a work of art Guided by the spirit of the Craftsman who made it and the rich Traditions that developed within its walls the Japanese house went on to transform our lives in the [Music] West

Channel: Journal - History Documentaries

Views: 22,328

Keywords: journal, history, historical documentaries, historical documentary, documentary, documentaries, japan, japanese, art of japanese life, japanese life, life in japan, handmade, art, artistic, cities, city, cityscape, architecture, city architecture, tradition, origin, traditional, craftmanship, ancient, tokyo, kyoto, osaka, hiroshima, yt:cc=on, japanese culture, the tale of genji, dr james fox, art documentary, edo, hokusai, hiroshinge, daido moriyama, studio ghibli, isao takahata, grave of the fireflies

Id: jdrfiGafsI8

Length: 58min 12sec (3492 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023